


the price we pay

by dysphoria_of_being



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Explicit Smut, M/M, Mild Kink, Mildly Dubious Consent, Peter Pan is not Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold's Father, an argument could be made for stockholm syndrome, let's just ignore some unworthy canon shall we, maybe someone dies but you don't care about that one, mild violence, no one is actually underage and that's extremely clear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-01-26 07:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1679510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dysphoria_of_being/pseuds/dysphoria_of_being
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Hook's lost years among the Lost Boys, doing business with a Peter Pan who comes to know him well enough to later feel him up casually for a hipflask.  </p>
<p>Complete, four (4) chapters:<br/>1. remember why you came<br/>2. remember where you're from<br/>3. forget who you were<br/>4. forget what you've done</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. remember why you came

**Author's Note:**

> if you haven't seen Good Form, it is recommended before reading.  
> if you have seen Think Lovely Thoughts, try to forget.

* * *

It's blistering hot when they make port and he thinks, _I don't recall it being this soul-sucking, how in the blazes did those boys tramp around in hooded cloaks?_

He'll regret breaching Neverland's shores, he always does, but the milky-white beaches with their tropical flora canopies are too enticing to refuse, and what would a pirate's life be without the occasional sojourn in sand and surf with plentiful stores of rum?

Scratch that-- _dwindling,_ he amends, _dwindling stores;_ the real cause for dropping anchor. Neverland is certainly the ideal place to replenish supplies -- a world of whatever one can imagine made real simply by wishing it -- if only the magic worked out at sea, as far out as he was comfortable floating. The sailors, his men, don't understand why he's so apprehensive to leave the bays beset by mermaids behind, but with every passing footfall that intrudes further into the island, he thinks, _I'll take mermaids any day, mate._

_I'll take just about anything over what calls this island home._

They make sport of Neverland as a sanctuary, but for him and the single being who rules it, Neverland is sanctuary only of heartache. The dessicated remains of loss and regret are what's buried there, in shallow graves, in the land where no one grows old and none ever die. When nothing can perish, they don't learn how to dig deep enough to keep the most painful ghosts entombed. The unnatural timeless stillness of Neverland is what makes the captain's torment sound so loud.

_Drown it out,_ he thinks. _Drink until you can't see straight._

No. Killian must remain focused and alert for what's to come.

When night falls, not all heed his warning to return to the ship-- a few weary men make camp, eager to be off the nauseating swells of the sea, for revelry and reprieve from captain's orders. He returns the next day to find the camp deserted and blood soaking the ground. What could have done this? his sailors demand desperately, What could pick off strong men one by one? What island creature leaves no trace of bodies?

How can he explain the evil made flesh here? How can he explain that shallow graves are so easy to find, you just follow the playful trail of a boy-king with the face of a cherub and the grin of a jackal, and hope he's entertained enough by your hunt for his casual sense of fair play to overpower his deranged taste for suffering? How do you tell men who have faced the fury of the ocean, rugged and worn tough, that an adolescent rules this world and his teasing whims are the most terrible monster of all?

_Curry favor, lads,_ he thinks. _Keep the boy amused._

Pan is horrifying when he plays with you, but he's most dangerous when bored.

 

***

He's made it ashore and back twice more since then, now with a new level of caution in his men, and all he can think is, _The boy bides his time._ It's the lingering sense of dread that really does him in, in the end-- the haggard hunch of prey that already believes itself caught. Just going through the motions of acting on-guard, half-heartedly keeping watch, like he's only postponing the inevitable. Like he's waiting for the trap to spring, like he just wants to get it over with.

The fourth time he makes his way through dense jungle, he meets Pan face-to-face. Runs smack into him, in fact. Terrible reflexes. Reaches for his sword and draws a hipflask instead.

"Oh, it's you," he grumbles. Takes a swig. Lets his eyes roll down, away-- anywhere but those twin vast depths glittering green-blue in a boy's face.

_Swallows the ocean,_ he thinks irrationally, _nowhere else to run._

"I didn't expect to see _you_ here again," Pan replies warmly. "It's too late to save him, of course."

"It was too late for him years ago, lad."

"Has it been so long? Ah well, time flies when it stands still." Those eyes shimmer with cool malice, a bitterly sardonic humor that can only be seen and shared by those who have already been beaten by it.

"It's too late for me, too, methinks."

Pan nods at the strong drink in his one good hand and chirps, "Only if you keep indulging, _Captain."_

"What have I come _here_ for, if not to let loose, eh?" He sweeps his arms wide across the air, makes a grand show of it, his resignation. Surrender with swagger, and a devil-may-care grin. "Indulge me."

This devil probably doesn't care.

"Oh, I will," Pan assures him, leans close enough to menace were he not a head shorter in stature than the fearsome pirate rogue. Despite their height difference, despite the slender form of the boy crowding his space, Killian feels menaced. "But remember, Captain-- everything comes with a price."

When Pan disappears in that infuriating way, he thinks, _I'm still paying for deals I never made._

 

***

It's not until his hook is poised in the air, prepared to slice off a gnarled stalk of the island's most potent treasure for the harvest of his vengeance, that Pan appears beside him.

"I see you haven't learned your lesson," the boy goads him jovially, and Killian nearly injects himself with the poison of Dreamshade from his startled jolt.

"Bloody hell!" he grunts, taking a careful step back. The jostled thorns weep with their sinister ink, gleaming under torchlamp flame, and he contemplates eternity in a moment of black sap, a slow and steady _drip, drip._

"That was close," Pan observes like it's a joke. His lips are twisted in that ever-present smirk as he strides forward, curling thin fingers around Killian's tricep. Just like old times.

He wrenches away and is disgusted to find himself unsteady on his feet.

"So this is why you came back?" Pan asks, and there is the slightest trace of displeasure in his tone, and it doesn't appear intentional. An uncharacteristic faltering of his ever-careless facade. "The same reason you ventured here before?" Pan is a master of concealing his true feelings or having none; any slip of divulgence is rare, but Killian hasn't the sense to latch on and exploit a weakness. He is, at this moment, in the presence of this creature, barely managing to stand.

"A very different reason this time, mate," he says, and cups a hand to his forehead. "I did learn. The hard way."

"You strike me as the sort of man who does everything that way."

He glances up sharply at that, but Pan is no longer facing him, has turned his back and wandered dangerously close to the ledge. Pan gazes out across the sparkling panorama of his starlit island, a long and low canvas spread far beneath the mountainous peak of their plateau.

"And if I choose not to let you leave, this time?"

He laughs. Maybe he shouldn't; maybe it's the croaking cackle of desperation or the still-smoking ring of arrogance he maintains like a cloak, maybe it's unwise in the presence of this boy, but he does, he wants it so bad. Wants to feel like he has the upper hand for once in his miserable bleeding life. Especially when it's his _only_ hand.

And Pan's a sporting lad-- he grins back. _Let the games begin._ Killian thinks about crocodiles and biting off more than you can chew. Thinks about the boy's perfect white teeth.

Says, "I managed once before. I'll do it again."

Pan fixes him with _such_ a look. "No one ever leaves Neverland unless I will it."

There it is, the admission he's been waiting for, the spoken confirmation he's craved for _years,_ and all he can say is, "Why didn't you stop us?!" He's glaring at this boy like it might change something, like there is still possibly some relief to be found, but underneath the surface all he thinks is, _everything's gone._

_I know what you are._

"Why didn't you-- You could've _saved_ him--!" All this old anguish, those dead-end tears, and he no longer wants someone else to blame. It's just a show, just to prove he hasn't really given in, to keep Pan dancing.

"I _warned_ you," Pan spits. Plays along. Pan's good at that.

"And then willingly sent my brother to his death!"

Even better at changing the rules. "Well, never you worry, _Captain,"_ Pan practically growls the title with scorn, "because this time, you're not going anywhere."

He gapes. His lips part without a single clever retort; he's played right into the boy's hands, and he wonders if his words even matter at all-- if Pan had not already made up his mind, perhaps a hundred years ago, and is merely watching the tiles topple where they stood. It's not the first nagging hint of predestiny he's experienced here.

"You wouldn't keep me trapped," he tries, "Where's the fun in that?"

"Where's the fun in letting you run off to exact your silly revenge?" At the obvious shift in Killian's gaze, the surprise, Pan snorts. "Oh yes, I know all about your _crocodile."_

It's not the first unsettling shudder from speaking casually with a being he can barely hope to fathom.

Pan is eyeing his woeful apparatus in place of where a hand should be. "Let's make a deal."

"What could you possibly want from _me?"_

"Suffice it to say I have use for a man of your means."

"Rakish good looks and a charming wit?" His grin doesn't come as easily as usual, but it does come. Pan rolls his eyes.

"I need someone to travel between realms for me-- to sail the foreign seas, if you will." Pan's smirk turns lethal. "You do that, and do my bidding, I'll give you the most powerful poison in all the lands, and your free passage to use it."

"Why not go traveling yourself?"

"That's not part of the deal."

He sighs, he grinds his jaw, he glares into the unwavering vortex of Pan's smug stare. He considers. "So, assuming I accept this deal, you'll let me leave? Right now?"

"With orders, yes, and _without_ your Dreamshade prize."

"What makes you think I'll come back, mate?"

Pan leans close to his ear and for one gut-wrenching moment he worries the boy might bite it off, but all Pan does is whisper, "Because there's no other way to kill him." Then, in the blink of an eye, Pan is gone.

 

***

When he stumbles back on decks, satchel conspicuously empty of any vegetation, he's more rattled than he was after watching her die in his arms. That was all pain, all loss and abject misery, but this... this is watching his brother die a second time. His gaze is lifeless and far away; he can't really focus on any one thing in front of him; his expression is wracked with defeat. This is a confusion that questions the very substance of his identity.

He believed he could retain his honor despite becoming a pirate, and countless jugs of rum later, one can imagine how that turned out. Honor itself was an ideological construct of the very life he so furiously abandoned, built upon standards designed by the powerful liars of his world, and in that moment, the only person who spoke the truth was Pan.

But Pan was a liar too. Or perhaps-- if not _actually..._ certainly not _trustworthy._

He's sick to sodding death of all these caveats, of struggling to navigate so many twists and turns of the tale, of killing himself every night just trying to carve out a place for his convictions and waking the next day hungover, a little more numb, a little less sure of what matters.

He lost a brother, and with him, a belief structure. He went rogue, enraged, and lost more than his moral compass-- he lost purpose, started wandering, stopped noticing when the final piece of selfhood he thought could be retained slowly dissipated. He began lying to himself.

Just to match the way everyone else treats him.

When he met her during another pointless night in a bar, it was like coming home. He won't say her name anymore; a tattoo and a missing appendage are terminology enough. One permanently present, marking his very skin like the scar of her meaning in his life, and one permanently absent, as obvious as her death. He won't think about the subtle ways she changed him, because ultimately, all that accomplished was to chisel away a little more of the man he could've been. She reminded him of his best qualities, and then took them away for good when the crocodile took her heart. The crushing made such a fitting metaphor for her murder.

Everything real in Killian was crushed too.

Charcoal dust where his pride should be, ashes for honor, and a sick sinking emptiness to feed the rest. Only vengeance still burned in him, bright and hot; while the rest withered, while he thought of nothing else, stoking that fire kept him on the move. Following its harsh and searing light brought him here in the first place; now, when at last promised the fuel for this _need,_ he gets cold feet?

_Stick 'em in the coals, then, mate._ He traces the swell of his silvery hook with a single thoughtful fingertip, and then clenches his fist around the cool metal until it warms to his flesh, until his knuckles pale with strain. Whatever final fractures of good nature still somehow splinter him, let them be stripped away. Let his blood run frigid as the alloy of his hook and make his sorry heart to freeze, let this fury radiate like steam from his skin to cook the world around him.

If he must act in the employ of evil and do the dirty work of the damned, so be it. Cold on the inside, smoldering hot to the touch. He's not afraid he might melt. That vile, hideous crocodile will burn first.

It's no accident he chose a weapon to replace a hand; an instrument of pain where his gentle caress might've been. One appendage for stroking skin, the other for impaling it. He _belongs_ here, with the wild boys and their demon king. He sailed across realms with this sense of direction and arrived to find himself just as lost as them.

And Pan just smiles and deals the cards.

The men come to him for orders and retreat quickly, when they glimpse how badly-shaken he seems. Only Smee braves to stand at his side and ask the real question.

He still doesn't have a solid answer. He's still picturing Pan's face, imagining the horrors ahead.

"He's just a young lad, Captain," Smee ventures tentatively.

_You've never seen his eyes,_ he thinks wildly, _You've never actually met him, never stood in his strange presence._

"The magic here makes him seem like more," Smee is saying.

Killian thinks, _He **is** the magic here._

 

***

He accepts the offer. After all, what else has he got to lose?


	2. remember where you're from

* * *

Each day his cabin is shrinking inward by degrees, creaking with the toss of the sea like a graveyard of angry bones. Not his well-worn, beloved ship. Not the wood and rigging, clean and varnished, but something new and ageless, warped by the beguiling magic of Neverland. It clatters in his skull, makes him sweat beneath heavy leather, makes his breathing come thick.

He strides in aimless circles, fingering the curve of his hook, pacing his quarters. Awaiting the next dastardly demand of his services, and the next sickening cackle when he asks if Pan is done with him yet.

He lays prone in his bunk and stares listless at the ceiling, telling himself he's just allowing the sailors reprieve from his critical captain's eye. He isn't seen for days on end, and then, only during the brightest parts of noontime, when no shadows can creep unseen beside him. He tries to smile at his men, tries to make jocular conversation, like he used to. He drinks much, much too much. He locks the cabin door at night.

It's locked tonight, but as he surveys the air above his bed with dull eyes, hands folded loose over his chest, he hears a distinctive rustle in the corner that is neither ship nor crew. His breath stills. Every lamp in the cabin is lit, but not even his many oil watchtowers can keep all the darkness at bay. It slithers inside.

Someone is inside the cabin.

Three guesses who.

"I've told you never to come here," he grates out through clenched teeth.

"And why not?" Pan asks, striding confidently out of the shadows, "Wouldn't you be more comfortable meeting in familiar territory?"

 _The familiar,_ he thinks, with a bitter inner scoff, _is growing darker by the minute._ What he says instead is, "Could ask the same of you, lad."

Pan laughs like a loon, and in that instant appears every bit the capricious juvenile he pretends to be. _"I_ have nothing to hide," he boasts, "but the island does sometimes get boring."

 _Ah yes,_ he thinks, _the monotony of your own paradise._

"I'd much rather see what _you're_ hiding."

"Well, you can't," he snaps, and sits up. He's moving to stand, to usher his unwelcome guest out -- as though Pan requires the luxury of doors, ha -- when a plate of the most mouthwatering slab of steak he's seen in _months_ is slapped down onto his bedside table, right under his nose. The delicious aroma of freshly-grilled meat wafts throughout the cabin, coupled with a tantalizing heap of potatoes and greens, piping hot.

"I thought you might be hungry," Pan explains offhand.

He stares down at the plate with a shock that morphs quickly to skepticism, and then raises his gaze up to the boy. His eyebrows say it all.

"Go on," Pan urges with a refreshingly sincere grin, "It's not poisoned."

"No?"

Pan rolls his eyes. "Now why would I want to kill my favorite pirate captain?"

"I'm your _only_ pirate captain, mate," is slipping out before he can stop himself, before he can correct the customary banter. Pan's expression glimmers with pleasure.

He recognizes that look. It's the look that sends lesser men into fits of trepidation, that lures young unwanted boys so readily into the snare-- _Mine._

It's the look that thinks, **mine.**

_Seven hells, what did I just say?_

Before he can stammer some transparent excuse, Pan is sweeping the comment away, saying "I _can_ be kind, you know. I'm not a monster."

"Then what are you?" He fixes the boy with a hard, imploring stare. "Because you're certainly not lost."

"We're all _lost,_ Captain," Pan chuckles, "in our own ways. You better than most understand that."

"I'm right where I want to be. On the island where my poison grows."

"This isn't _where_ you want to be. It's just how you plan on getting there."

He tries the smirk on for size. "Is there a difference?"

"Only if you're having a crisis of faith." Pan's fierce, trenchant gaze bores into him, and his mouth slackens as the farce of his expression fades. In an instant it's just them, the boy who is not a boy and the man who's barely that, barely there, but for the first time in weeks he feels sentient again. Stimulated raw by the subtle trace of danger in this company, by the foe who won't be overcome with wit or disarmed by the flash of a handsome grin. Pan accepts nothing easy in him and for the first time since he can _remember,_ he's honestly tempted to rise to the challenge.

In doing so, he finds he has absolutely nothing to say.

Without his repertoire of retort, without the idle chatter of defensive humor and a crass penchant for innuendo, Killian is unable to respond at all. It's because he won't lay himself bare.

Perhaps Pan senses this reticence and hasn't yet learned the tools of eliciting intimacy, or perhaps he's simply bored of the Captain's withholding, but he turns toward the door just in time to conceal a vexed expression. "Eat up," Pan barks over his shoulder, "Tomorrow will be a busy day."

As if to make a final statement, Pan disappears before his fingers even brush the doorknob.

 

***

As promised, he's awoken during the dawn hour by a flank of Lost Boys crawling up the hull of his ship. He's groaning, shrugging absently into his coat as Felix growls, in that drawling monotone way, "Orders from Pan. Your new assignment."

Felix's grin isn't nearly as commanding or destructive as Pan's, but it's got the same practiced bite. He gives it his best careless lope of a smile in return. "And what is it this time? Does he want me to pluck some hair off a werewolf's back, or will I be returning his library books?"

The laughter of his sailors is somehow both nervous and relieved; the gall of their captain, but that means he _is_ their captain again. Felix's laugh, however, is merciless and grating. "Not this time, Hook. Today you're going to kill."

Even fluttering sails can be heard on a ship gone silent as this one.

His eyes narrow. "Excuse me?"

"He wants you to pay a visit to the Sherwood Forest. There's a certain maiden we need... eliminated."

"And if I refuse?"

"Come now," Felix chides, "do you really want to cross him?"

 _No,_ he thinks, _I'll just as soon visit this forest and never return, Dreamshade be damned._

But in the end, he goes through with it. He tells himself he's been driven to this by survival instinct, that Pan would hunt him down if he didn't, but this sits so close to where his own lies live that he knows it is one. He's no longer the man his brother wanted him to be, nor the man she thought he was. The crocodile robbed him of everything, and he gave the rest away.

One hand stolen by a murderer, the other sold to murder Maid Marian in her sleep. What an _honorable pirate_ he's become.

What a mindless, selfish tool he will be.

When they return to Neverland, beaten and bloody and less two sailors felled by a thief's arrows, he doesn't even bother to seek Pan out. He sits atop the prow, legs straddling the bowsprit and dangling perilously over the calm evening tides, naught but a few feet above any mermaid's reach. He thinks, _Let them come._ He drinks.

He's contemplating the nature of a man who makes a living by theft -- whose very name is synonymous with robbery -- and yet still maintains such a code of honor that he's respected and loved by all who know him, when new footsteps sound on the decks behind. He's memorizing the sensation of his sword sliding through flesh like butter, the blood splattering his throat and the taste of rum turned copper on his stained lips, when Pan calls to him. He doesn't turn.

Pan's buckskin-clad feed pad lightly up the forecastle deck. "You won!" Pan pronounces to his back, loud enough to echo and soaked with that glib, teasing pride. Matches his recent sanguine paintjob. He feels sick.

"Aye," he manages to mumble, "I won the fight."

"More than that." Suddenly Pan's voice is right beside his ear, whispering against his skin and drawing chills up his spine. "You _beat_ him, the thief with principle. A man of integrity, decency, _virtue--"_

He whirls around with a clenched fist, but the swing is wild through empty air and he strikes nothing but his own balance. Pan has appeared in front of him, standing so evenly on the thin mast of the bowsprit that he can reach down to steady him by the shoulder. He tries to jerk away, and nearly topples backwards. Pan looks light as a feather, like he could dance up the bowsprit to its merest tip, and solid as a pillar, like trying to shove him off would only end with _your_ splash.

"You've had too much to drink," Pan reprimands.

He takes a long swig in response, but none of the humor has reached his eyes.

"You should be proud! You've performed beautifully."

"There's nothing _beautiful_ about killing a woman in cold blood, _mate."_

"Sounds like you relate," Pan snarks.

"Leaving a good man alone with his misery--"

"Don't forget the child." At his sudden, horrified look, Pan chortles. "Did I forget to mention that? You've left a good man alone with his misery _and_ their child, now motherless."

He crumples forward, hugging himself bonelessly to the round wood of the column between his legs. He's dizzy with the shift of the landscape and the translucent depths of water beneath his face, and he's abruptly half a breath away from vomiting or sobbing. He dry-retches instead, choking back tears that threaten to spill and shoulders rocking with bile that isn't even close to the surface. He holds drink better than that. This sickness comes from a thicker kind of liquid, the kind that pumps through innocent veins.

The kind he's covered with. He can still smell it.

He knows _exactly_ how Robin of Loxley will feel.

Waves crash into foam against the keel of his ship, and waves shimmer like a cruel mirror that reflects his face in broken chunks and roiling unease, and waves reveal his whole body lying at the sandy bottom, facing upright like a deadman, facing him wet with the tears he won't shed, facing him with the stricken expression he wears.

Pan leans down, bending forward at the waist to say, "Corruption always wins. Nothing can stay pure forever, and if it tried, it would miss out on such a fascinating variety of tricks for its own survival." He can see Pan's face floating upside-down beside his, that ruthless smirk rippling outward on the waves, stretching so wide it threatens to consume his own reflection. Stretching so wide it starts to merge into the blacks and greys of his own form. "You are born _helpless,_ Captain. The very first beast you kill for food is a mark against your purity. It's all downhill from there."

"No," he tries, and his voice cracks. "No," he tries again, "you're wrong. There are _other_ things to learn." He sits upright, swinging his torso away from the mesmerizing visions of the sea below, and in the momentary force of this conviction he is neither light-headed nor unsteady; he is every bit the skilled lieutenant of a former life, swinging from ship rigging like it were solid ground. "Fairness, decency, _morals_... killing a stag to eat, to survive, is just the way of the world, but men can be _decent_ to one another--"

"Tell that to the stag," Pan interrupts coolly. Pan holds out his flask, offering it back-- he hardly remembers dropping it. He doesn't remember Pan catching it. "It's _all_ survival, _Killian._ Are you so arrogant to believe your kind is the only one with fantasies of something grander?" Hearing his name on that tongue unnerves him deeply. "Or that your kind is the only one deserving respect? To you it's a meal... to them, it's murder."

"And what about _you?"_ he snaps, raising a brow to hide how it feels to be called anything but his rather distasteful moniker by this monster. He redirects the conversation a less personal way. "What's it to you, where do _you_ fit in all of this?"

Pan tilts his head curiously, as though genuinely considering the question. It's rare to see him appear so outwardly honest. "I too must survive. My methods are just a bit..." Pan licks his upper lip, "inhuman?"

Inexplicably, he laughs. It's a clipped, sarcastic sound. "I expected you to say something like, 'I'm amused,' or..."

Pan angles his head down, his eyes pass into shade. "Even a darkness like mine has its needs."

He studies Pan seriously for a long moment, drawn in by the growing glow of starlight on his youthful skin as the Neverland sun sets into the ocean. They're both bathed in dim pastels, and Pan seems softer now, somehow; almost demure. Like Pan has come close to telling a secret. Finally, with a quiet voice, low and silken and absent his usual callousness, he asks, "What are you?"

Instantly, everything gentle about their exchange is gone. Pan reverts to cocky adolescent form like a whipcrack, and his crowed laugh is just as sharp. "Ha! I'm just a _boy."_

"Wearing the skin of it doesn't make it you," he growls back. "Hell, how many stags gave their skin just for this coat of mine?"

Pan grins. "Now you're getting it. A man who calls himself good bests a man who calls himself bad, because they're both wrong. Poetic, don't you think?"

"That's not an answer."

Pan's grin grows sinister. "What am I?" Pan bows so low that his mouth falls evenly with Killian's ear, and every muscle the pirate owns tenses up. He's staring directly into the shoulder of the boy, he can see the tendons flexed in Pan's neck, can feel the heat emanating from skin. "Well..." Pan whispers, "I'm higher up on the food chain."

Pan vanishes, but the feeling of Pan's lips grazing his cheek lingers for _hours._


	3. forget who you were

* * *

Eventually the sailors start to stray. They'll drop anchor in Neverland's mermaid-infested waters and notice someone missing, sometimes groups of three or more. Over the course of countless trips -- he can't even _remember_ how many times they've gone on some absurd quest or carried demented messages between ludicrous characters -- his crew dwindles to only eight or so of the most loyal men.

One afternoon they land in calm, pleasant waters just off the coast of a bustling seaside hamlet that reeks of bakeries and fresh flowers. It smells delicious. It seems wonderful. They'll be in port less than a day; short mission.

He glances at the weary and doubtful faces of his men, watches them eyeing each other and murmuring, notices their fingers clutching the straps of unusual amounts of luggage. He sighs.

"Is that how you all would be feeling, then?" his voice booms over the screeching of gulls, and he turns to address the lot of them from his quarter deck. His gaze is sympathetic.

Nervously, they begin to voice their reasons together, and he lets them hear the sound of their own words for a long time.

"I understand," he declares with compassion, raising his single hand to quell their chatter. "We've had a good run of it, mates. None of you need return to Neverland, if you don't wish it."

He shakes their hands as they depart, each and every one; he smiles and nods through their ' _thank you'_ s and their _'bless ye, cap'n'_ s. He watches them scurry hungrily away, off to new lives in a new land, to women and booze or more honest work, and he thinks, _They will all be dead before I'll even see a grey hair._

It should be a comforting thought, but all he feels is this thrumming drumbeat of dread that pulses through his chest with every weak stroke of his heart. Like watching the final members of his former life fade away, his sense of normalcy and the only real sort of family he's always known, a crew, until all that's left are the crocodile he needs to kill and the demon who might help him do it. He's never felt so alone. He's never _been_ so alone.

He does the job, a silly and pointless endeavor involving some particular seashells, and returns... not home. There is no home for him left.

"Where is everyone?" is how Pan greets him when the boy appears on deck. Killian is not even startled by these sudden visits anymore. Now he's just grateful for the company.

The Jolly Roger without its crew barely feels like a ship at all.

"I sent them off," he declares boldly, "They've grown sick of this life, of doing your bidding."

 _"Your_ bidding, you mean."

"Pardon?"

"Well, you're the one forcing them to be here," Pan explains casually, striding around the main deck like he's barely paying attention, like he's just describing the weather, "for the sake of your vengeance, and all. They've no reason to visit Neverland otherwise."

What he hears is, _You're just a selfish captain. You're no better than a king seeking weapons for his wars._

 _"I_ for one am relieved to be rid of them," Pan is saying, facing him down again. "Men at their age don't really belong in Neverland, you know."

"And at my age?"

Pan's impossible ocean-colored eyes glitter with fiendish humor. "We make exceptions for lost boys."

He tries to chuckle the words, "I'm not a lost boy, mate." Tries to laugh off the notion as ridiculous, but Pan is just _staring_ at him and he thinks crazily, _A sailor at heart is a boy forever, they perform weddings before the mast but you never grow up, never grow up, and Peter Pan ought to know..._

And Peter Pan himself is saying, "Let's find out."

 

***

Every night, there is a bonfire.

The Lost Boys dance in mad whirling dervishes around the firepit, clanging sticks and beating drums while Pan goads them on with his enchanted lute. The song of those pipes is a somber, enticing contrast to the chaos of the banging noise, the scorching heat of the fire on a tropical night, and he finds himself listening more intently than he'd expected. Pan watches him as he plays, those gleaming firelit eyes never leaving Killian's face despite all the activity crowing wildly between them, and he thinks, _It would drive any man to drink._

He's tossed back more heavy swigs than he can count before he realizes that his little flask must be refilling itself, with the magic of the island, or should've run dry hours ago. He's too drunk to discern whether Pan is responsible or if he's doing it himself, calling upon whatever strange rivers of the aether answer to boys and not men, obey only imagination or the persistent belief that what _should_ be there actually _is._ He's very, very drunk.

The heady pulse of the pandemonium around the fire is getting to him.

He starts to feel that bassline drumming between his ribs, where a heart should beat but suddenly, suddenly instead, it's the pounding palms of the tribe. He starts to feel his feet scuffing in the sand, itching to follow along with such an energetic melody. Before he can think better of it, he's up and dancing round the circle, caught in the whirlwind and throwing himself into the rhythm. Darting limbs and twisting bodies and stomping feet and ever that music, ever the heat of the rising flames, of the boys cawing and shrieking and laughing at both his sides, and now he's laughing too.

Sweat trickles down his temples and builds like steam beneath his collar, but he feels no urge to remove his stifling black leather coat, and suddenly understands how all the Lost Boys do it-- the allure of testing his limits, of weighing himself down with everything he owns just to prove he can still _dance,_ just to show how easy it can be to break free of the mundane shackles of living like a man, and embrace the boy within. The deeply satisfactory mystery of shrouding himself in these affectations, like the lads in their _spooooky_ cloaks, covering himself with the aesthetic of what he wants to be. What he-- what he plays pretend to be--

A dashing brigand, dressed all in tight leather and black. A pirate rogue, a swashbuckling man of principle. A handsome, charming sailor.

 _Well at least that last one,_ he thinks giddily, _is still true._ Confidence inflamed by this praise, by this _fervor,_ he begins to take lead in their spinning dance-- he performs something of a footloose jig from his old long-lost land, he claps and slaps his knees and cackles with the cavorting boys who leap enthusiastically around him. He's kicking up a duststorm under black boots, heel-toe-heel heel-toe- _crash,_ and all the while, Peter Pan watches.

The rhythm of the music changes just slightly, a few wistful notes pulled from Pan's pipes to alter the dancers like puppetry, and Killian breaks away from the mad circle to stumble over near Pan's perch. He's only dizzy now that the twirling has stopped. He's grinning like a lunatic, laughing like his lungs have grown larger.

"Whad'd you think'a _that?"_ he demands right in Pan's face, and to his credit, the boy just twists his head away and chuckles.

Pan makes a soundless whistle as his eyes nearly tear up from the stench of liquor wafting off the Captain in waves. "Where _do_ you get all this rum?" Pan asks merrily, and then reaches out to lay a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"You oughtta know," he slurs, aiming for serious and ending up somewhere around hilarious; he can't stop _laughing._ "Doan'choo know all th' sea-- secrets?"

Before Pan can respond, the island landscape starts to upend in a way he remembers quite well, and he manages one flash of a thought -- _Oh, this is gonna hurt_ \-- right as the ground slams hard against his back. Nope, he's toppled backwards, it wasn't a peculiarly aggressive patch of soil. This graceless fall has knocked the wind out of him, and he gasps around his new perpetual laughter as his head lolls to the side, grinding dead leaves in his hair.

Pan is hovering over him where he lays, bending forward with an elbow braced on a knee and smirking. "That looked painful," the boy calls without the slightest trace of sympathy in his expression.

"Still think I'm lost?"

"No," Peter Pan hums, reaching down to stroke the lapel of Killian's coat, "I think you're right where you ought to be."

And there's no time for Pan's words to mean anything, Killian just keeps laughing until the blissful darkness sets in.

 

***

He wakes up wincing, expecting the worst hangover of his life before consciousness even fully returns, but when his eyes open on a Neverland jungle late morning, his skull feels clear and painless. Something maybe pried loose is rattling around in there, but it doesn't _hurt._ It feels almost like relief.

He tries not to think more about it.

That night, Killian goes back to the bonfire.

Tells himself the ship without crew is too lonely for a pirate who's spent his entire life working beside other men, day in and day out. Tells himself even the company of wild boys and their fairytale leader is better than the empty creaking decks, full of ghosts. Tells himself it's not to seek the penetrating, magnetic gaze of Peter Pan.

Tells himself a lot of things.

 

***

Pan starts sending a few Lost Boys with him, on his little missions into other lands-- to help work the sails, Pan says. With Neverland's magic at his rudder and Peter Pan's blessing in his pocket, the Jolly Roger has not actually required a crew in years. He wonders whether Pan knows he knows this. It's not the first uneasy question to cross his mind since selling his services to the devil in exchange for an I-owe-you.

One of the boys, calls himself Rufio, seems to like making trouble wherever he goes. He's got a real knack for mischief, this one, and a very obvious scheme of interfering with Killian's work whenever possible. He thinks maybe Pan's making him babysit.

It's not the first cringe-worthy job he's had to accept since joining the bonfires of Neverland.

He notices that Rufio's gathered himself a following, of sorts; a small group of Lost Boys who seem very swayed by the private speeches he gives when he thinks Killian's not listening, who tromp around after him posing and posturing like they're the _ba-a-ad_ ones. He pays it little heed until they travel to the outskirts of the Enchanted Forest, looking for some kind of star-root or some such, and Rufio comes up behind him to get his attention with a hard shove.

He spins around to face the insolent boy, bristling but hiding it with his characteristic easy grin. "Do you need some help walking," he intones sardonically, "or do you just need to sit this one out, mate?"

"That depends on you, _mate,"_ Rufio barks back. "Me an' the boys, we wanna talk."

He casts a brief glance over the four Lost Boys huddled together behind Rufio, and snorts. "I guess you'll be doing the talking, then."

"I seen you around the firepit," Rufio plunges ahead, "He likes you. Pan."

"What makes you say that?"

Rufio scoffs. "You ain't one of us."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It's not. But he keeps you _around,_ still. I bet he trusts you. _I_ don't trust you."

He sighs tiredly. "Look, lad, what is this about? You think trying to insult me is the way to make friends?"

"I don't wanna be your _friend,_ pirate. But I could use your help."

He just stares at Rufio, one eyebrow arched in a look of utter skepticism.

"Me an' the boys," Rufio continues nonplussed -- _He's either an imbecile or touched in the head,_ Killian thinks -- "we're gonna take over Neverland."

Killian _laughs._ He's, he's genuinely _amused_ by this audacious and ridiculous claim, he can't help it-- Rufio does not take it well. In his weird, staggering way, Rufio comes to the conclusion that Killian is somehow on Pan's side, rather than completely baffled as to how a couple of scared young boys are going to overpower an immortal monster.

"He's just gonna use you and discard you like all the rest!" Rufio screeches angrily, "Help me, together we can trick him, we can--"

"It's a fool's errand," he interrupts.

"You're afraid!"

"I'm not afraid," he rolls his eyes, "I'm _smart._ Why kill Pan when he can give me what I want?"

Rufio shakes his head in disgust. "He's never gonna help you, Hook. He's just keepin' you there like a toy, like all the rest of us." Rufio gets a weird gleam in his eye and crows, "Maybe you _like_ it that way, hey?" It makes Killian wonder just what in the seven hells Pan has said to these boys, but, "Or maybe you wanna shut me out and take it all for yourself!" suddenly Rufio is all over him, crowding his space and shouting, "Get off my _turf,_ ass!"

"Bugger off, lad," he snarls, and shoves the boy away. Despite Rufio's confidence, he's naught but a frail adolescent and Killian easily overpowers him with a single arm. "I'm not here for your _turf._ I'm just here to acquire some Dreamshade, and then I'll be on my merry way."

"Yeah yeah, you been sayin' that for eighty-nine years, Hook."

He staggers. He bloody _staggers_ backward like he's been struck across the face, and his fist clenches in his shirtfront. _"What?_ Eight... eighty-nine..."

"That's right," Rufio snaps triumphantly, "Time sure does fly in Neverland, huh?"

"It doesn't matter," he mumbles. He tries to recover, grasps at the only thing that keeps him going, the only thought that always matters because he's drilled it into his own head: "My crocodile is still out there somewhere, still alive, and I _will_ have my vengeance."

"And how you gonna get that, pirate? You gonna run back to Pan and tell him all about my plans?" Rufio draws his sword quick like he's given Killian ideas and brandishes it boldly, and without much skill.

He watches Rufio calmly, eyeing the dull edge of the blade. "What exactly do you think you'll do with _that,_ lad?"

"You're just as cocky as _he_ is," Rufio spits, "Pan. Shit, you deserve each other."

"Say what you will, I won't fight a _boy."_

"Then you'll die a _coward."_

Time stops. Everything stops. He narrows his eyes like twin daggers, oozing the poison of his next murderous words: "What. Did you. Say?"

"I said you're a _coward,_ Hook!" Rufio charges forward and Killian blocks the strike with a metallic _clang_ before he's even aware that he drew his sword. "Fight me!" Rufio shrieks, and swings his blade again, and Killian automatically blocks. "Coward!" _Clang._ "Coward!"

Rufio is screaming at him, raining down deadly blows again and again, attacking with every ounce of his strength and no thought at all for defense, and in this violent flurry of motion and the constant, grating cries of _Coward! Coward!_ Killian glimpses a weakness and thrusts his blade home.

Rufio's own sword clatters to the ground. His skinny arms fall slower, lowering like little toppled masts still strapped to sails, and Killian watches numbly as blood starts to pool around the boy's feet. Rufio gurgles, spits up a lungful of fluid, and they both stare down at Killian's sword plunged through his sternum.

"You-- you c-c-- _hurk!"_

He's imbedded his hook in Rufio's shoulder and yanked the boy forward, impaled him completely on the sword; Killian can see the dripping red tip extending out through the boy's back. He's pulled them face-to-face for the killing strike. He doubts that Rufio can even feel the pain of his hook piercing flesh, now, but for one deranged second he really hopes so.

"I am _not,"_ he grinds out through gritted teeth, _twists_ the blade; harsh choking, "a _coward."_

Rufio stares disbelieving into his eyes, gagging, shuddering, and then slumps face-first against his shoulder. He pulls the sword out with one clean, swift jerk and lets the body slide down to the ground, lets it fall there, just a body now, just a boy.

He whirls to the rest of them, clutching each other in terror, and screams, "Anyone else?!" They run.

The Lost Boys run from him, from his wild eyes and his wide grimace and the blood of their fallen comrade smearing his front, and all he can think is, _They will never say Hook is a coward so long as I live._

But that's not entirely true, is it. After all, Rumpelstiltskin _lived._

 

***

Rumpelstiltskin may have lived, but he didn't _fight._ Killian fights. He fights himself with everything he has right up until the ship slaps down in Neverland's waves and Pan is sitting atop the forecastle, dangling his boyish feet and smirking. Then, Killian surrenders.

"You did it," Pan purrs.

This is _why_ he surrenders; no choice is ever really his, not anymore. What's the point.

"You sent me on that little milkrun to the pretty town by the sea on purpose, didn't you?" he accuses, just to hear the sound of his own voice reciting the lines. Just to play his part. "So my men would want to leave-- you knew they'd like it there."

"I also sent you to kill Maid Marian to teach you a lesson," Pan says, and shrugs.

"Are you always so bloody _manipulative?_ Do you ever do _anything_ simply because it's, it's _nice?"_

"Do _you?"_ Pan shoots back.

"I've been known to, when the whim strikes."

"And what about Rufio?" Pan retorts sharply, "Was that just a whim too?"

"You _set that up,"_ he snarls. "That was _your_ fault."

"All _I_ did was arrange the trip! You're the one with his blood on your sword."

"Right," he bites out, "the blood of _your_ traitor just happens to end up on _my_ sword."

Pan slithers off the ledge and pads silently toward Killian with something akin to acquisition in his eyes. "That just means--" Killian doesn't flinch when the boy's hand darts out to wipe blood off his jacket, when did he grow this comfortable with Pan's touch? "--I have a strong ally."

It hits him like a haymaker to the stomach when he realizes Pan could just defeat Rumpelstiltskin, if the demon-boy wanted. He's never been drawn to power until now, until the _lack_ of power has cost him more than he was ever willing to pay. Until he became the plaything of those who possess it.

But Pan calls him an _ally,_ and now he wonders if that's true. If he can use it. _Curry favor._

He has the brief flash of an image of the two of them, Pan and the crocodile, poised like eternal combatants over a chessboard, and himself as merely one of the pieces; a figure frozen in the shape of his sadness being tossed back and forth as the madmen above chuckle and debate over what to do with him, how to use him next.

But Rumpelstiltskin was just a man, once upon a time. A sad, sorry sack of a man who did not deserve the woman he lost, and what Killian did to him. And Peter Pan was once lonely.

He's lived through all of it; through the utter _waste_ of his brother's stubborn death at the reticent hands of a boy-king who would tell the truth and not lift a finger further, through the strange and unholy creation of a Dark One whose pathetic anguish would drive him to destroy lives after the destruction of his own.

Pan was right about him; he is, if nothing else, a bloody _survivor._ He has fought for himself and little more his entire life, and he's managed to keep doing it no matter how little of the self he remembers remains intact.

He wonders, sometimes, during these verbal sparring matches, why it's still worth it.

"No," he says. He takes a step back, puts some distance between himself and the pied piper of his confusion. "We're not allies. I'm not a _villain."_

Pan's eyes flash with ire and he snaps, "Neither am I."

"You're certainly no hero."

"Heroes don't _exist._ Come now, Captain, don't be ridiculous. Men are simply called heroes when they have more _bravado_ than the rest," Pan sneers, "and stand up to someone else's villain when that person can't. No one stands up to their _own_ villain."

"Maybe you're my villain," he says without conviction, "Maybe I'm standing up to you."

"Why start now?" Pan asks so flippantly, like he's completely unimpressed, like all of Killian's _bravado_ is just entertaining to watch, "You've never been a righteous man."

"I was, once."

Pan laughs. "You think defying your king by becoming a _pirate_ was the moral thing to do?"

He swallows hard and searches for an excuse, hates himself for needing one. "What about after? I was in love."

"You were a _liar,"_ Pan corrects viciously. "You lied to conceal your woman and you've killed for less. And look where it got you?" Pan smirks in that contemptuous and jeering way. "Hell-bent on revenge like more killing will make the pain go away. You are a _killer,_ Killian."

Hates himself, now, more than Pan. "Don't call me that."

"Why not? It's appropriate."

"It's not your name to say."

He's already beaten, been beaten for a century, why does he keep fighting when all he'll do is bleed.

Pan rolls his eyes. "Names are not nearly as important as your arch-nemesis makes them out to be."

"Just _don't."_ He's begging now, and they both know it-- he's run out of quips, lost his stomach for the careless banter that so easily masks the truth of his own destitution. Pan has all the advantages and now not even a brash grin and a suggestive swagger will get him through the conversation; he's been revealed.

But Pan keeps _talking_ to him like he's still worth being heard, like Pan knows, has known all along, the substance that Killian's really made of beneath his charm.

"I think I've earned it," Pan says, and there's a sour bite to the boy's voice but wistfulness also, and perhaps Pan is right. Again.

Perhaps Pan really does know him better than he knows himself, without all his guarded delusions in the way, but that isn't _fair._ Pan did not _earn_ it, through the careful crafting of a relationship and Killian's willingness to share, Pan just, he just, he _knows_ things. How can Killian describe intimacy to a psychopath? How can he explain the concept of exploring all facets of a person to an eternal being who never ages, never changes, has always been what it is and always will be, and has never needed to justify itself?

Maybe the demon-creature understands something about forging identities, becoming a legend through the body he's in, and maybe he disdains the power of names because a single term could never hold him captive, but Killian will get _lost_ without the compass of his title to guide him.

 _Both_ Jones brothers perished on that fateful day during his previous journey to Neverland, so he left behind 'lieutenant' for 'pirate captain,' and then Captain _Hook_ was born out of violence and pain, and vengeance. She-- _Milah_ \-- was the only one who ever called him _Killian._ Just Killian.

Just a man in love, who was perfectly content to sail around with a woman in his arms and no grander endeavor than romance on his mind.

Now he takes up arms for a fiend with a boy's angelic face, he terrorizes all the lands on his demented and fruitless hunt for a crocodile who is, by now, just searching for a lost son, and he hears Pan's cloying, honeyed voice in his head singing _If I'm a villain then so are you-u-u..._

 _Well what do_ you _know about it?_ he snarls back, _You have no idea what love is, or what it's like... to lose it..._

The tricky thing is, he's not actually sure that's true. Maybe Pan doesn't love like mortal men, if he is indeed capable of it at all. Pan has certainly never embraced someone wholly, despite their flaws-- because flaws are what Pan _exploits._

But maybe, in his inhuman twisted way, Pan understands the intimacy of holding a man's weakness in his hands. Holding it and cradling it, instead of crushing it. This must be the only way Pan can relate, when his mind is always whirring with strategic moves and manipulation tactics, when he considers others as no more than pawns; if all Pan thinks about is advantage, surely Pan knows the value of giving someone else an advantage over _him._

So Pan says thoughtfully, "There's something I want to show you," and Killian thinks, _Oh god._

 

***

Peter Pan takes Captain Hook to Skull Rock. He takes the Captain _inside_ Skull Rock, past all the protective barriers, into this most sacred chamber where a very strange sight awaits.

"It's a clock," Killian remarks intelligently.

"It's an _hourglass,"_ Pan corrects. "Not all of us have the luxury of a _tick-tock_ counting down to our doom."

He whirls on Pan in surprise. "Doom?"

"I told you," Pan says solemnly, "I have needs."

He stares into the luminous glass, watching the tiniest but ever-present trickle of sand settle atop the bottom pile. "...What happens when the sand runs out?"

"The magic of Neverland dies. And so do I."

"You... you're not immortal?"

"I am so long as the magic of this world holds strong, but not even I can keep this up forever. I need more fuel, more pixie dust. And you know what creates pixies."

Killian looks at him like _No I don't._

_"Belief."_

He scoffs. "Everyone here sure as hell believes in you, _Peter Pan."_

"It's not enough," Pan declares. "It's easy for unwanted boys to believe in a home when it's handed right to them, but I can't keep preying on the weakest hearts in the lands. I need hearts that are more true." Pan's voice grows melancholy, his expression distant and somber as he murmurs, "All of us here are so... tainted. Half the time I'm not even sure it's belief so much as desperation."

"What about me?"

Pan laughs bitterly, mockingly, and Killian is startled to find that it hurts a little. "You're the most desperate of all, _Captain Hook._ You _still_ don't even really believe, you've just let yourself be dragged into it. Into me."

He opens his mouth to retort, and nothing comes. He actually _thinks_ about it, for once, what the boy is saying; he witnesses the accuracy of Peter Pan's perception and feels, perhaps allows himself to admit, for the first time, genuinely lost.

He feels older than age and hasn't aged a day, not since sailing into Neverland's waters; a little more scruff on his chin, maybe, a little unkempt around the hairline, but still as young and handsome as he was... hell, eighty-nine years ago. He feels wrong in his skin.

He thinks about the skin of a crocodile. About the needs of immortality, about what Peter Pan is maybe trying to show him now, by bringing him here, by revealing his greatest liability to Killian just because the pirate whined about names.

Thinks about names. Who he might really be, the things this boy keeps calling him.

The things he's sold his soul to do.

_And maybe none of us are so very different, in the end._

"Do you hate him?" he finally asks.

"Who?"

He turns to glare at Pan, but the ire doesn't make it through the trip, and it just becomes that same cold, broken stare he's used countless times before; the weariness, and the seriousness, of a man's expression when he's one step away from his last. "You know who."

"Rumpelstiltskin?" Pan confirms innocently, and Killian is surprised at how readily Pan gave up information in the guessing game. Maybe Pan wasn't even playing. "I don't _hate_ him. I'm not overly fond of him... Why?"

He swallows. It's more difficult than it looks, there's something lodged in there, it's obstructing his breath. "Is there anyone else in all the realms who could rival you?"

"That's an interesting question." Pan inclines his head, considering. "Not that I've met." His eyes twinkle with that old familiar mischief. "But it's always possible."

"Then why do you _do_ this?" he demands, and suddenly he's emphatic, suddenly he's marching into Pan's space, just getting right up in the boy's face and shouting, "Why live like _this?_ Here, in this... this _place."_ He doesn't understand, maybe he's never really understood anything, maybe that's why he's _always_ the last to know. "Why don't you _leave?"_ He's losing it, feels like he's losing his mind, but his composure is just gone and now he's, he's on the verge of tears, saying, "Why not _go..._ just conquer, or--"

These questions he's screaming, they're not about _Pan._

He feels a warm palm against his cheek. Pan has reached for him, has cupped a hand to his face not to grab or strike or intimidate, but simply to comfort. "What's the matter?" Peter Pan asks, and his tone is so gentle, his gaze so earnest, his touch so tender that Killian simply lowers his forehead to the boy's shoulder and weeps.

Peter tilts his face down to press his chin, his mouth into Killian's soft hair. "Tell me," he murmurs.

Muffled and strangled, Killian says, "I don't know what to tell you." Swallows again. He's still choking. "I don't know what my life is, anymore. I've lost _everything,_ I... I- I've done _terrible_ things."

"Would you rather stay here?" Peter asks soothingly, stroking his fingertips through Killian's hair, "Instead of going out on these missions, doing these terrible things?"

"You're manipulating me again, aren't you?"

"Yes."

He raises his tear-soaked gaze to Peter's face, and he can feel the way his eyebrows are twisted, the way his mouth hangs slack and his expression is so deeply wounded, so stricken and weak-- he doesn't _care._ "Why?" he moans, plaintive. He doesn't _care_ if Peter Pan tries to exploit this vulnerability. In that moment, with the boy's hand on his cheek and the boy's fingers in his hair, he cares about nothing beyond the answer to this question.

And Peter Pan answers it.

"Because I want you to _stay_ here," Peter utters forcefully, and it's the first time Killian has seen him genuinely appear like he's telling the truth. "I enjoy having you here. Your _crocod--_ bloody _Rumpelstiltskin--_ doesn't deserve your obsession with him, he doesn't _deserve_ you. All the thought you put into him, your entire life's devotion-- it's _wasted_ on him. I hate watching the way you won't move on, the way he _keeps killing you_ no matter how long it's been. You're taking this revenge out on _yourself."_

Something vital, something he didn't even realize was still there, breaks in Killian. It feels like the last thing. So what he says is, "Show me something better."

Peter stares at him.

"You claim to speak the truth," he begs, "tell me more than this world's worth of it."

And Peter Pan says, "Believe in me instead."


	4. forget what you've done

* * *

It happens slowly. The cold he tried to incubate around his heart all those years ago sloughs off little by little, each bonfire he visits, when the searing heat of Peter Pan's world finally breaches his defenses, and as it melts away it leaves dead ground inside. His passion is only inflamed when he joins the dance there, or when the boy comes to his cabin late at night to take Killian inside him, and take the rest of Killian's self-respect away.

He's not hot on the outside anymore, either. He burns with _nothing._ He's lukewarm with regret.

It doesn't matter.

 

***

The first time Peter Pan's hands slide under his vest, he nearly sprints out the cabin door. Peter has him against the wall, his back pressed hard into a wooden moulding that jabs between his shoulderblades and the boy just keeps kissing him, over and over, teasing and insistent, and then hands are moving beneath fabric across the sensitive skin of his abdomen and he's about to bolt but, Peter kisses him again. Something keeps him there, rooted to the spot.

It's not magic. It's not fear. Maybe it's that whole decades have passed since he's been with a woman, and men have needs; maybe it's the subtle way Peter reveals himself a little more each time they speak, like he's working on a temporal scale far longer than human lives but gradually, in his own way, allows Killian to learn him.

Maybe this is the only real affection Killian's felt in a century and he's so desperate and craving for the love that once filled him, he'll try anything to have that sensation again. He _knew_ revenge is not resurrection; he was perfectly aware that hunting the crocodile was not a secret spell to revive her, it's just that he never expected to _live this bloody long._ Realistically, he did not even expect to live through his vengeance; a heroic blaze of glory sounded good enough.

But now his mourning has a centennial and his survival instincts have kicked in and he hasn't skinned anything except at Peter Pan's behest and he's, he's... the boy is _kissing_ him and it tastes like oxygen to a drowning man.

Peter suckles down his throat and begins undressing him, and as the coat falls from his shoulders he thinks, _This is what I am._

 

***

"When I left the island, with Liam, you let me."

They're in his cabin, Pan is once again invading his private space and he's inexplicably irate today; furious with the piles of rubbish that have been festering for weeks, furious with the neglected state of his own hygiene, furious with the trainwreck of his life from personal tragedy to sheer apathy, and the way he's just... just let it all rot.

Pan shoots him a withering stare like _this again?_ and says, "I didn't stop you, if that's what you mean."

"But you tried." He rakes his good hand through rumpled, unkempt locks and then slaps a stack of star-charts off the desk with one aggressive sweep of his arm. "You told me not to leave." The parchments flutter like unconscious butterflies to the floor, graceless angry snow settling sepia between them, instead of white beneath their feet. It never snows in Neverland. "And I didn't listen."

"Well you're a stubborn man, Captain Hook." Pan folds his hands neatly on his thigh, sitting prim and proper as though to contrast himself against Killian's messiness; he is all tightly-wound self-control compared to Killian's temper. "And I do tell the truth."

"It wasn't just to save my brother's life, though, was it?"

Pan's laugh is high-pitched and tinkling, the cruelest music. "It wasn't even slightly for your brother's life."

"You wanted me to stay, even then," he guesses, growling out the words. "Why?"

"You were the first man I'd seen in, oh, _centuries_ who I didn't detest."

"Was it to _punish_ me?"

He beleaguers this point, this one vital fact he still can't understand: It was the smirk he barely noticed when he offered to pay Pan _anything,_ that day they first met. It was Pan's hand gripping his shoulder, and the boy's willingness to let Killian believe the price of his brother's life could simply be afforded in _gold._

Pan tilts his head, and says nothing.

If he had known the real cost, if he'd seen the gears Pan set in motion all those years ago, he would _still have sodding paid it._ Pan's ultimate scheme to keep him in Neverland-- he's paying for it anyway, but he lost a brother in late fees, he's paying for it _now_.

He screams, "All you had to do was _stop_ us! You had that power, you could've... I would've _stayed,_ Liam would be alive, you would've had your company... but you _didn't!"_ He grabs Pan by the shoulder and shakes hard, hard enough to rattle the boy, demonstrate some of the raw strength that is his single, pitiful advantage over Pan. _"Why?"_

Pan sneers up into his face, "Maybe I wanted you to come back in black leather and eyeliner." Pan appears every bit the defiant adolescent, jeering and struggling slightly in Killian's grip, but he doesn't simply vanish and Killian thinks, not for the first time, _He's enjoying this._ "A pirate is far more fitting a companion for me, don't you think?"

"I'm not your bloody _toy!"_

"You've always been my toy, _mate._ From the moment you set foot on my world to the moment I let you leave with your soon-to-be-dead brother in tow, up until this very minute, you've been _mine."_

"You set it up." He shoves Pan away in disgust, he can't-- "You knew I'd return."

"I had an inkling." Pan's expression turns dark, ugly. "But make no mistake, Hook-- _you_ made the choices. You suffer the consequences."

He grabs a fistful of Pan's shirt and yanks the slender boy forward again, always this back-and-forth chess match, this vicious waltz that is two parts distrust and one part umbrage, but the heat between them has been building for a long, long time and he's one snapped gesture away from just decking the boy across the face and _damn_ the consequences, and then suddenly, Pan's lips are on his.

He tells himself it's just surprise, the reason why he lingers; not the pleasure of a soft, pliant mouth moving against his skin, not the tantalizing first taste of a tongue that dips inside just for a second, just to tease-- he lingers, eyes closed, and then pulls back.

He doesn't push the boy away, no. He just pulls back and stares down, into inhuman eyes framed by such a beautiful face and sees, _not for the first time,_ how delicately Peter Pan's chin curves beneath a sensuous little pout.

Then Pan is kissing him again, slamming his weight back hard against the wall and a rounded decorative corner spikes him between the shoulders and he separates their lips just long enough to gasp, "What are you _doing?"_

"Enjoying the consequences," Pan breathes.

"You... you're just a _boy..."_

Pan snickers. "I was old before you were even born."

"So it's true, then-- you really are a demon."

"Would you prefer I were just a boy?" Pan mocks, tilting his head and widening his eyes with feigned innocence, and it stabs Killian through the throat to realize his only two options, now, are either sharing an unseemly kiss with a lad far too young for propriety, or locking lips with a fiendish creature who _uses_ him like a plaything.

"No! I..." but there is no good answer. A villain or a _victim,_ those are his options.

"Then let's play," Pan demands, and Killian has never seen a young boy look so bloody desirable, and he thinks, _Villain it is._

_This is what I am._

 

***

Peter Pan works his lips in a soft round _o_ along Killian's shaft, stroking all the right places and sucking just enough to drive him wild, toes curling eyes rolling back and god, it's the best thing he's felt in _so long,_ it's been _so long_ since he's had anything better than his own hand and he doesn't even care, he lets Peter kiss him for hours after, until his tongue has licked away the taste of his own seed from Peter's hot little mouth, he doesn't care.

"I'm still going to send you on assignments," Peter murmurs when he's done, "It'll do you good to have work."

And Killian thinks, _Does that mean, when I come back here, I'm coming home?_

 

***

Peter rides him until Killian comes with his mouth open, staring up at the not-boy's angelic face with a questioning, a confusion and unease that leaves this, this strange aftertaste in his throat for days. He figures it out eventually: it's the taste of a villain's sweat.

It's the way he can lose himself in the sensation of a demon's thighs wrapped around his waist and forget, just for a moment, the sound of her name. The demon interprets this expression, this consternation on his furrowed brow as pleasure, the look of his lust near completion, but it's not.

It's restlessness.

Peter rolls off and lays beside him, but he just stares panting at the ceiling as the emptiness gapes open wider inside until he closes his eyes.

 

***

They call him Peter Pan's pet, and he doesn't argue, maybe it's true, but he cares so little for his reputation among a pack of feral boys, these days, that he just watches them walk by and says nothing.

Peter likes to rub his hands through the hair on Killian's chest, delighting in the soft black curls that cushion his palms and collect their sweat like rainwater, musky and sweet. He likes to suck Killian's dick until the pirate clenches his jaw, eyes rolling up in his head and then just _stop,_ pulling off with a wet pop because it makes Killian grab for him, makes Killian growl hungry and eager. When they kiss, Peter coils himself against Killian's chest like a cat, all languid curves and supple skin, and Killian tries to tease into the boy's mouth with his tongue but it hardly feels like lips anymore, it just feels like black magic. Peter seems happy.

Killian has never felt so dead.

 

***

He tried with Tinkerbell, and maybe she liked him, maybe she thought he was an attractive rogue, but fairies don't engage romantically with humans and they certainly don't get pirates off, and this fairy couldn't even get him off the island, so that was that. He might have a few good drinks with someone who's suffered like him, he might while away the hours in melancholy commiseration and that can be consoling, for the lonely stretch of the night, but he doesn't want to spend his time with a lass who reminds him of himself when he can barely stomach the man he's become. Might as well stare into a mirror. Just as lonely, but a mirror is something he can _break._

Instead, he cavorts with a foreign creature whose way of being is so strange, so unlike his that sometimes he forgets Peter is responsible for the pain. Fitting, then, that Peter is the only one who can alleviate it.

He tried with Baelfire, and _that_ certainly went well.

But the truth is, Killian _keeps trying,_ he just can't accept that Peter Pan is the best he'll ever do.

"You're playing pretend," Peter declares matter-o-factly one night, when they're laying nude together in Killian's bunk.

"Whatever do you mean?" he tries, attempting an innocent grin.

Peter shoots him a scornful glare. "Remember who you're talking to, Killian. I know the look well." He leans forward to whisper against Killian's stubbly cheek, "When you move inside me, it's not me you see."

And Killian can't help it anymore, he shivers at Peter's slightest touch. "Well, I don't exactly know what you really look like, do I?"

"You never will, it's impossible." Peter settles back and his eyes glitter above a sly smirk. "But I could take another body as my own, if that would satisfy you better. A woman, perhaps? I'll pick a pretty one." Peter's voice is both goading and seductive all at once, and Killian's brow lifts in surprise.

"You... you would do that?"

Something like hope blooms in his heart but, "No," Peter giggles. "I _like_ this body, I chose it for a reason. Being a woman sounds absolutely horrible. I just wanted to hear what you'd say."

But the flower of hope is only ever just a bitter weed, sent to strangle more life out of any ground it grows upon.

"Does it not _bother_ you that I 'play pretend'?"

"I still get what I want." Peter bites sharply into Killian's collar, and tongues the wound away. "I always get what I want."

And Killian thinks, _What a child._

 

***

The body of an adolescent boy can be remarkably similar to a woman, in some ways-- absent the enticing soft press of a bosom, of course-- and Peter uses this to his full advantage. He uses the body he possesses like an alien spirit to lower defenses, to provoke and play through the human world about as seriously as he takes it, and now he uses it to seduce a man who considered himself... well, interested only in women.

Peter knows exactly how to arch his lithe back, how to rotate his hips and make them protrude enticingly like a woman's curves, how to rock the firm globes of his buttocks against Killian's thighs until the pirate is groaning, panting into a throat where the skin is just as pliant and tender as a woman's flesh. And if Peter enjoys the fact that Killian's climaxes look remarkably like he's in pain, well, who can fault a demonic being for relishing a little sadism?

Killian discovers he likes being teased, Peter does things to him that Milah never tried and it makes him ravenous, makes him depraved, makes him grip tighter and thrust harder and sink his teeth into Peter's shoulder while he holds the boy down, while he drives his cock into Peter's tight hole and snarls with the pleasure of finally getting what he wants. Peter teases, and Killian _gets what he wants._ It's the first time in a long time that happens.

Nevermind the fact it's exactly what Peter wants, too. The fact Killian is still just dancing to Peter's music-- at least this time, Peter makes sure he enjoys it.

Every sensual note Peter plays has him moaning.

He loses himself in flesh, these days, and thinks, _There's no better place to be lost._

 

***

When Peter cries out, when he vocalizes his pleasure with words, he never says _god_ or curses; nothing filthy ever spills out of his pristine little mouth. He just says _please,_ like for a being such as him, that word is a sin.

 

***

Peter likes to straddle him, likes to buck and writhe impaled on his length while his rough palms clench around Peter's smooth thighs, he likes to gaze down at Killian's stricken face and watch as every serpentine twist of those limber hips draws another wound across the pirate's expression, eyebrows pinched and mouth slack, as Killian gasps for more and loathes himself for every minute of it.

Sometimes Peter likes to tie him down, binding his wrists to the solid planks of wood that line the cabin so Peter can watch how every move he makes slowly brings Killian to climax, he murmurs about how much the pirate clearly enjoys it and Killian thinks, _Just shut up and ride me._

He knows he's fucking helpless, he doesn't need rope as a reminder, but it's better to come inside Peter while tied to his own bed than be strung up by him, so yes, Killian enjoys it.

Better to make the boy shudder and moan into his chest than put an arrow through it.

Killian has always been a practical man.

Sometimes Peter likes to gag him, threads a cloth between his teeth and cinches it tight around the back of his head because Peter wants to watch him struggle, wants to hear the coarse whistling of his breath as he pants around the cotton with his lips pulled back and his teeth gleaming, the furious glare in his wide wicked blue eyes as he curses like a sailor but cannot voice the vulgar words. Peter can't kiss him this way, so he sinks his teeth into Killian's nude chest instead, and delights in the muffled roars while Killian strains against his bonds and tosses his head against the pillows and comes drooling down his chin, wincing and moaning and filthy with what Peter's done to him.

Peter never even seems to consider entering Killian; he's far too selfish a lover to work for anyone's pleasure but his own. He only wants to feel Killian hard and thick inside him. For a disabused pirate, small favors.

Sometimes Peter will let Killian move behind him, gripping his hips to jerk him back for those rough and vicious thrusts as Killian builds into a pounding rhythm, he likes the way the pirate grunts into his ear, suckles at the nape of his neck, tongues along his jawline. He likes how Killian's hands splay across his svelte abdomen, clutching and caressing and holding him flush against the man's body while Killian lets him rock through the waves of pleasure, slow gyrations and low whimpers. Killian prefers this position because he doesn't have to look into those impossibly vast eyes, he feels more in control, he smears his lips along the sweat-sweet skin of a taut thin shoulder and tastes flesh that tastes human, and closes his eyes.

Peter likes to let him lay that way when they're finished, because his mouth moves almost automatically to worship Peter's neck, the delicate curve of his shoulder, with soft little kisses as Killian lingers panting and spent in the haze of his orgasm. He likes to feel Killian's warm breath on his skin. He pulls Killian's arm around his waist and as the pirate holds him, he closes his eyes.

Usually Killian falls asleep there, laying halfway on top of him, and the pirate doesn't know but Peter sometimes rolls around until he's cradled fully in Killian's arms, savoring the weight of this sleeping man, tucking the loose strands of hair behind his ear and touching his temple, his nose, his lips.

Peter has never let them fuck in this position, missionary, face-to-face, but he's never watched Killian drift into slumber without crawling under him like this. Killian never wakes up, not until Peter's gone and the bleary light of Neverland's dry afternoon filters into the cabin. Killian always wakes up alone.

He always wakes up on his stomach, one hand reaching out splayed across the sheets, and no one there.

 

***

Bruises decorate his throat in scattered patterns from Peter's more enthusiastic kisses; bruises line his outer thighs where Peter's hands have grasped during the throes of his pleasure, head thrown back and body bucking while Killian grimaces beneath; bruises spot his hipbones from Peter's more vigorous rides. He never wakes up sore. The teethmarks Peter leaves across his upper chest, dotting his pectorals, ringing a nipple, never fade completely; Peter bites into his skin and he howls, low and stilted, strangled by little heaving breaths and the quiet sounds he makes each time Peter slides back down, his eyes clench shut and then he comes, lips curled back around bared teeth and mouth agape.

"Before I met you," he mutters sardonically, with not a little bitter self-mockery despite his tawdry grin, "I used to take an awful lot of beatings."

Peter doesn't get the joke. "Indeed you did."

"I was being sarcastic, mate."

"But it's true. You think you were some cutthroat pirate?" Peter sneers down at him.

He knocks the boy off with a hard swipe and crawls back, sitting up against the bunk headboard and glaring as he grinds out, "I was."

"Says the man who lectured me about _honor_ and _fair play."_ Peter spells himself dressed and spreads his arms in a wide, inviting gesture."When _I'm_ the most sporting lad you know!"

"Just because I believe in fair play doesn't mean I won't kill a man-- fairly." He rears up proudly on his knees, still naked -- it hardly matters, he's always bare before Peter -- and points accusingly. "Sword to sword, _real_ battle, none of your _tricks."_

"Says the man who fucks Peter Pan for a magical poison."

He growls in frustration. "Rumpelstiltskin won't _fight_ me with a sword--"

"So you just up and change the rules?" Peter interrupts. "That doesn't seem very fair."

Killian stares at him, one lengthy, cold glower, and then finally bites out, "It's the best I can do. You were right--"

"It's about time you started believing me."

"--I _am_ a killer," he continues undeterred, voice low and dangerous. "Milah didn't change that. We were pirates together, and I did terrible things _before_ your employment." His chin lifts defiantly. "But when I was with her, she made me a better man."

"She made you _weak,"_ Peter amends with a snarl, and then smiles. "But now she's gone. And I don't ask that you be better, Killian. I just want you to be what you are."

"A pirate."

Peter leans forward to hiss in Killian's ear, "A _villain."_

He throws Peter down on the bed and restrains him there, good hand wrapped around the boy's throat and hook looming threateningly over Peter's face as he growls, "In Neverland, you get what you ask for." He crushes his mouth to Peter's delicately parted lips in a breath-sucking, violent kiss that draws a surprised whimper from the boy and then, in one swift _riiiip,_ shreds Peter's shirt to tatters with his hook.

Peter moves like water against him, that pert round ass poised in the air when Killian has him on his hands and knees, it feels like the raging sea bucking beneath Killian's thrusting hips and he thinks, _All good deeds are just an illusion._ He belongs on the ocean, he belongs moored in Neverland's harbors with access granted to every ocean in every world, he belongs balls-deep inside this demented boy who takes everything he dishes out and still wants more.

And all those good deeds were just an illusion.

 

***

"Do you even care about her anymore? Your woman, your reason for hunting the crocodile," Peter asks snidely, and Killian's gaze snaps to his smirking face. "Or do you just care about being a pirate again, and having a heading?"

Killian intends to ignore him, to roll over until his face is buried in the pillow that smells like their sweat and pretend to sleep, but, "Revenge is certainly something to _do,"_ Peter insists in the silence, "Keeps the blood warm."

Killian rolls his eyes instead. "Are we still having this conversation? I loved her, and I lost her." He scowls. "It hurt."

"But what hurt the most was meeting an enemy you couldn't best." Peter turns his head away, stares out pensively across the cabin, and begins to grin. "Admit it, Killian. You know revenge won't bring her back, but it certainly _sounds_ good-- to finally kill the one person who took from you, who _beat_ you once. _That's_ why you're so obsessed." His mouth twists into something unholy as his grin elongates, revealing teeth. "What sort of pirate just lets that kind of thing go?"

"What do _you_ care about my motivations?" he retorts, "What difference does it make to you why I seek my vengeance? I'm still here, working for _you,_ either way."

"Maybe I'm deciding how much longer to keep you," Peter suggests casually, and Killian goes stiff.

There's a bizarre stirring just beneath his throat, in the rafters of the empty cathedral of his heart, where it's dusty and tastes sharp, like copper. Like panic. So what he says is, "Well, you're unpredictable," and he says it with that light-hearted, devil-may-care sort of charm, but it must flash across his face because this devil suddenly seems to care.

"Does that worry you?" Peter asks softly, "The chance I might retain you here longer than you bargained for?"

He thinks, _It's already been longer, I didn't know your bargain was so steep, the collateral just happened to be **me**._

Thinks, _So maybe it's the other thing that worries me now._

Says, "Well that's the price of villainy, isn't it?"

"Mine or yours?"

"Making deals with the devil traditionally does not yield fantastic payoff."

Peter sneers at the idea. "How... predictable."

"Predictability isn't _bad,"_ Killian contends.

"No," Peter agrees calmly, "it's usually what people mean when they say trustworthy."

He supposes there might really be a difference, that although he can never successfully anticipate Peter's next move, he always knows why Peter will be making it-- he trusts the boy to be the ruthless, conniving immortal he is. He trusts Peter to tell the truth, to play his games with rules he'll always follow, even if the board is rigged. Even if he controls most of the pieces.

Killian thinks about the devils he's faced, and what it must look like when they face each other. Wonders if Peter has only been biding his time, waiting to unleash the pirate upon his sworn foe at the exact strategic moment, when his vengeance will benefit Peter the most.

"How much do you know about Rumpelstiltskin?"

"Ah, the _Dark One."_ Peter snickers in contempt. "I know enough."

"Was it true, what you told me when I first arrived in Neverland? That Dreamshade is the only way to kill him?"

"I never lie, Killian. The truth is far more entertaining."

He can't help it; he has to grin at that, and it feels like the same old sleazy grin he's always used, in the face of threats or humor, it didn't matter, he wore this grin and made his way. He didn't ask that question for the purposes of animosity, nor even to hear the same answer he always receives whenever he doubts Peter's honesty, as though repetition makes it valid. He asked simply because he wished to discuss the matter, and Peter obliges.

So Killian says, "I believe you," and Peter smiles. "But how do you know this? Call me curious, love."

"I've spent a great deal of time pondering what might kill the Dark One, should the need arise. I've always been more powerful, but as you know... there's a time limit."

"Always hedging your bets," Killian agrees with a fond chuckle.

Peter tilts his head sideways to toss him a friendly, sardonic look like _you know me,_ and Killian stares down at the boyish rounded features of Peter's sweet face and realizes, with a strange little nervous jolt, that he actually _does._ He _knows_ Peter, now-- he has learned intimately of the darkness that lives in human bodies, and come out alive. Come out with a few new teeth-shaped scars, maybe, but alive.

"I only play games I know I can win."

"Where's the fun in that?" he jibes, and then Peter jabs him right on a bruise above his clavicle, and he winces playfully away.

 _"This_ is the fun."

"Making me into a bloody dartboard of bruises?"

"Something like that," Peter murmurs vaguely, and then stretches up to press a kiss against Killian's tender, purple-blue skin. "The rest is just a matter of tactics, and I happen to enjoy thinking several moves ahead."

Peter will never actually say it, and Killian accepts this without complaint. He'll never say, _You're what I have won,_ or _Being with you is my prize,_ or _You're the reason I played that game,_ but Killian starts to hear it in Peter's hints. Neither of them is particularly sentimental, and Killian's never been particularly sure he doesn't fit somewhere else in Peter's larger schemes... but now, laying peacefully with the boy-king whose power and cleverness far outmatch Killian's personal nemesis in his arms, he thinks _he_ might be winning too.

"Why do you ask?"

Killian shrugs, jostling Peter's shoulder against his bare chest. "Sometimes it feels like you two are fighting some cosmic war across the stars, and I've -- quite obviously -- chosen a side."

This causes Peter to unfold along the length of his body; a slender, agile imp molding himself to every firm expanse of Killian's muscled flesh he can touch, like a king reclining in his throne, and Killian's bicep makes an excellent armrest. Peter tips his head back to lay a temple on Killian's shoulder and murmurs, "We're not enemies, though. Not yet. He's just trying to find his son, and I... I'm not trying to find anything, anymore." Peter gazes up at him seriously, that same deliberate gaze he remembers from countless other encounters, only this time he's maybe learning what it really means. "Perhaps I'm the one who's chosen a side in _your_ war."

So Killian kisses him, hard and searching, searing through the lips and down the spine until there's no air left between them, nothing but the sensation and the urgency and his hands all over Peter's limber body, waiting for the desolation to fade.

 

***

Peter starts whispering his name more than please, and it sounds like the safest sin there is.

 

***

He finds a new angle that makes Peter cry out and exploits the hell out of it, has the boy writhing beneath him and mewling with every thrust, Peter's typical self-restraint lashed to shreds by the force of Killian's hips slapping the boy's ass as he slides in and out, in and out, refusing to break rhythm no matter how much Peter screams for it, until suddenly he stops and Peter is left shuddering, groping back blindly for Killian's thigh, urging him forward and begging "Why, why did you _stop?"_

And Killian looks down at him, at those big, round blue eyes, and whispers, "I'm going to make it last."

He builds up again, the throbbing pace that has both their hearts racing and the boy screaming, he's got Peter's inner thigh in his hand, spreading the boy open wide and holding him there to take it hard until without warning, Killian starts to rotate his grip. Starts to slowly shift Peter's leg over his shoulders, around the other side of his body, and suddenly Peter's eyes snap open to find Killian's face hovering above him, he's on his back now with this man between his thighs and Killian keeps moving and

And Peter's never felt anything so fucking good.

They try to kiss but their lips keep missing, scraping hungrily across one another with every bucking motion and Killian's tongue traces out to tease inside Peter's mouth, all they can do is groan, and _Killian keeps moving._

Peter comes looking up into Killian's eyes, and when the pirate finishes a moment later, pumping hot and thick into Peter's silken embrace, he collapses, shuddering and spent, on top of the boy. Their skin is slicked with sweat and Peter's salty fluid but the boy wraps his arms around Killian's body and holds him there, like he's always done, like he's only ever done when the pirate was asleep.

It's the first time Killian has felt truly sated since they began these little trysts and he marinates in it, his temples are pulsing with the fading adrenaline as it soaks fully through his entire form, stem to stern, filling every limb with that calm, delirious weightlessness.

"That... that was..." he gasps against Peter's temple when his head drops weakly to the pillow, and Peter says, yes.

"Yes, Killian, yes."

The next time they make love, Peter lays himself open for Killian, pulls him down for a kiss that lasts until Peter's knees are bent up against his chest and Killian's rocking the entire ship with the force of his thrusts.

 

***

He wakes up entangled in Peter's arms and thinks, as he lays a hand delicately over Peter's soft wavy hair and kisses the boy's forehead, _I could live like this._

It's the most horrifying thought of all.

 

***

Killian often wonders why the company of a ruined and wretched pirate might seem appealing. Peter is _surrounded_ by the Lost Boys, by this madcap tribe of adolescents who veritably _worship_ him with their undying youth, ferocious and boisterous and berserk and everything Peter craves from the humanity he witnesses from afar, and yet...

And yet it is Killian's bed that Peter seeks.

Peter never seems fragmented, never seems to struggle between the opposing elements in his being because that slim, tight body really isn't his, it's not where he was born. If he even experienced something as mundane as birth. It has _become_ his, so gracefully and entirely that he owns it like an object, every segment of flesh; it has no mind of its own, no conflicting source of a troubled humanity buried in there, he produces every desire it may feel, he reigns every penchant. And the shadow he sends out, to fetch boys in their nightgowns from foreign worlds where dreams don't come true, that's his too. Peter is seamless.

So it's not that Killian doesn't _acknowledge_ Peter for what he is, for the value of his otherworldly features; nor is Killian the only one who does. It's not that Killian does or doesn't respect Peter's power; he does, and Peter likes that, until he doesn't, and Peter comes screaming into the sheets. Win-win, sure, but Killian isn't the only one capable and willing of providing, let's be honest, _either_ of those services.

He doesn't prefer the more human aspects of Peter because there aren't any; he doesn't pine over some nonexistent dichotomy between harsh moments and gentler ones, because even Peter's favors feel like teeth. He doesn't trust, with the abject fervor of youthful delusion or constant inebriation, a boy who loses his shadow but cannot bare his soul. He only trusts the thing that's there instead, the thing taken up residence inside, because when you can send your own shadow to do your bidding, you have no reason to lie.

That's not enough, though. Killian is a disaffected man with a lackluster sense of gravity; he laughs when he shouldn't and frowns all the time and grins even when he doesn't feel it, when the only thing funny is the fact he's there at all, the fact he's sitting inside his skull watching this travesty of an experience play out around him. Killian is _not_ a believer.

He's just... an _accepter._

He doubts, he lacks that whimsical approach of true belief, but he treads in the footsteps of titans and shares spirits with fairies and steals pixie dust or magic poison, depends on the day, so Killian _knows_ what he's up against. He understands intimately the inhuman lore because he's _surrounded_ by it, he sees it through his human eyes as though these figures of myth were no more bizarre than the ship he sails between realms, and it all just... he takes it as it is. His heart is not true. It just follows him around and beats as best it can when the legends choke him.

Killian's heart is just always beating, that's all.

So maybe Peter has essentially forgotten how to get to know someone new, from the beginning. His beginning is such a long, long way away, across the nature of time itself. It requires a very special sort of person to take the most prevalent, present parts of Peter on _faith._ To take the parts that are readily available for immediate access -- the _monster_ he's become -- on enough faith to actually learn how he became it.

Killian didn't... realize he was that sort of person. He still rather doubts it.

But there aren't many, and there certainly aren't many left who _believe._ But he pictures Peter's crooked, boyish grin, and it doesn't matter what he doubts. But it's not faith, to him-- it's so basic, it's just the observable truth; Peter _doesn't lie._

But even the beings Peter creates, the ones he whisks away on the night and rebuilds like little models, will be torn asunder by his sight, eventually.

The little humans he collects and gathers round him, adolescent boys with raging sentiments and a youthful, violent sort of love for the land of dreamers and the prince of dreams; even they will come apart, in the end. Peter possesses the sight that renders everything into mere predicted outcomes, into toy soldiers and calculated orders, and destroys reality simply by knowing it. His clock is ticking. His hourglass is dripping dust.

Peter is still embodied here, still can't see everything, still wandering as a singular cohesive entity through the ruins he collapses on ahead. The shadow may separate from him, but it still follows his sight, or buries itself in the pitch black of the grove where nothing can be seen at all. He has nowhere to walk but dead ground, the pathways of the condemned, that accursed trail he carves simply by seeing it and maybe even shadows need a rest.

He's trapped in this infernal self-spun cocoon of toppling towers and tumbling pillars because he can't yet see everything. The time loops, the perpetual state of _now;_ these trap him too, not just his Lost Boys, and the human parade marches on. But he _needs_ to be here, Killian still can't fathom why, and his _clock is ticking._

Maybe Peter doesn't know how to find an audience, anymore.

Because yes, that's what the world has to offer him; little people who think little thoughts, who assume their mere humanity is the _pinnacle_ of quality it's possible to experience, who assume it's a _grand_ and _noble_ act to simply be a man... because they believe those sad little stories told by the rare unlucky ones who have touched _real_ meaning. Those stories they must tell themselves for comfort, to ease their ache over the fact they'll never own it, not really. That's the _real_ fairytale.

The real fairytale is that a human happy ending can only occur if one ignores, or forgets, or defeats everything _better._ While standing right next to it, while forced to stare into the uncompromising truth of man's utter inferiority... no man could ever be happy with himself.

And there are so few of them worth believing in.

No wonder the numbers of believers are dwindling. Everyone just keeps... growing up. Believing the fairytales that teach them about magic and then, in the same breath, convince them to _destroy_ it.

Because there is a limit to what humans can have, but if they can't have it, then no one else bloody well should either. They call Peter evil so they can feel like they're good, because life is easier when there are only other humans to fight, with their little swords and pistols, and not monsters and magicians who possess powers they can't hope to comprehend. Life is easier when every story on every stage ends in victory against all odds, simply because the humans telling it believe their humanity should win.

But Killian has been behind the curtain, now. It's not that he's special, it's that he _doesn't_ believe-- not the lies any more than the truths, not the fairytales that demand his humanity conquer magic and keep the blackness of the bigger worlds at bay. He has simply witnessed that magic at work, watched it mutate what it touches as befitting its power and decided to take what he could. He accepts.

Peter broke him down and then built him back up, but Killian's habits are sticking, he feels like he's becoming exactly the man he used to be; his old self again as though it's his only self, maybe his real one, and the only difference is this time he's that self with Peter sodding Pan in his bed, instead of another man's wife.

He only vaguely remembers the fury, the abject _rage_ he felt when confronted with a monster in reptilian skin, wearing the scales of a crocodile for a face as he whimsically destroyed Killian's entire life with no more than a flick of his wrist. That agony seems so far away now; now that an ageless being has slept in his bed, now that he kisses the lips that sing nightmares out of dreams and lure children from their rooms when the moon is full and the music is right, now that he moves lustfully inside the body that houses something altogether more sinister and vicious than the darkest Dark One, more powerful than the deadliest wizard. He has grown comfortable in his audience for the damned.

He's become accustomed to hearing the other side of the story, has learned sympathy for the fairytale villains who combat that wave of the defiant ignorance of humanity, who see humans using goodness like a charade to justify their intolerance of power. And Killian, with his old vigorous swagger, accepts.

And Neverland makes you forget.

 

***

Peter wakes him up by flipping his earring back and forth with an annoying little fingertip, over and over until he stirs. He swims to the surface with an irritated noise and his eyes focus on the mischievous face above, and he grunts, "Quit it."

"Nnm-mm," Peter hums, and flicks his ear insistently.

He dives upward to crush their lips together, knocking Peter onto his back with the force and stealing a surprised, pleasured squeak from the boy's mouth. "Ha!" he growls victoriously, and then whips over onto his other side, laying with his earring smooshed against the pillow and protected from disturbance, and he closes his eyes again, and cackles.

Peter whines, tugging at his arm and shoulder to roll him back over, but although many powerful things, the slim boy is not physically strong and Killian does not budge. Peter cries his name with mock despair.

Finally Killian relents, allowing himself to be pulled over onto his back wearing a sappy stupid grin, and Peter's smile glows down at him, and he thinks, _I could live like this._

For the first time in years, he feels a little warm.

 

***

It could be months later, or decades -- Who can tell? Time flies when it's standing still -- when Killian crawls to the surface of himself through the afterglow haze of an hours-long session with Peter Pan. Immortal demonic creature or no, the boy certainly has every bit the stamina of an adolescent male, _and_ the carnal appetite.

He's let himself sink into the immediate relief of release so deeply, so eagerly that he almost misses the pensive look on Peter's face; his eyelids are halfway closed before he notices that Peter is gazing off into the distance and not at all revelling in the thick murky tide of pleasure as he should be. It makes him uncomfortable.

It makes him worry that perhaps his prowess as a lover is slacking, but more than that, it makes him _uncomfortable_ to imagine what unearthly gears might be whirring at terrifying speeds in Peter's head.

"What?" Killian breaks the silence.

But Peter just sighs.

"What is it?" he asks again, becoming increasingly nervous as he studies the boy by his side.

Peter studies back. "What makes you think there's an 'it'?"

"I've never seen you wear this expression before, love. It's new."

"Does new always mean bad?"

"For a pirate, no..." He grins in that ostentatious, ingratiating sort of way. "For a captive..."

Peter scoffs mildly, "You're not a captive, Killian. Except perhaps of your own selfish motives."

"Be that as it may. Tell me what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking about time," Peter murmurs, tracing the flexed tendons that run down Killian's wounded arm, fingering the rim of his prosthesis. "How it moves, what it does to a man."

"Growing old?" He watches this small, somewhat doting movement and arches a brow. "Does it frighten you?"

"It _mystifies_ me."

Killian snorts. "I'd say it's fairly straightforward, lad."

"It's not something I can ever do." Peter shrugs, almost wistful. "But, every once in a while, for a just split second, I understand the appeal."

"Well if you'd ever care to share this insight," Killian jokes, "you would set many human minds at ease."

Peter's gaze snaps to Killian's face. "You don't crave immortality?"

"Minds _including_ mine."

Peter's green-ringed eyes peer through him, shredding unvoiced arguments like kindling and bias like matchsticks until all that's left is watching each other in the cold, and silence.

Then: "You know you have an ending."

Killian blinks. "Y...es, it's called _death._ We spend our entire lives trying to escape it."

"No. You spend your entire lives _knowing_ it's coming." Peter twists around in bed, slithers up Killian's chest. "It may not be a happy ending, but that knowledge does make everything a bit sweeter. When your moments are so fragile, and so quickly passing, any _one_ could be your last-- which means each one feels more valuable." He looks away. "More beautiful."

"I didn't realize you were such a philosopher." Killian brushes gently at Peter's tousled hair where it hangs shaggy over his forehead, and flashes his sardonic grin. "Or do you just become more poetic at this time of night?"

Peter's sloe-eyed slit sideways stare says, _It's not the time of night._

What Peter says aloud is,"There's something about knowing at any moment you could be gone that makes..."

"Makes what, love?"

Peter's pressing forward before the words come, sealing their lips together again and again as he whispers, "Makes me want you more."

"You can have me again, right now," he moans into Peter's teasing mouth. He rolls forward, shifting his weight to push the boy back down, to slide on top again.

Peter lets him believe the conversation's over, for a moment; lets their lips crush together as the taste of Killian spreads through him like salty fire, seas swelling and tides burning and the bittersweet soak of ocean spray, and oil in the water, inky black oil blanketing the waves, until the poison of dreams overshadows all. In the shade of dreams, Peter breaks the kiss long enough to whisper, "I could have you forever. If I wanted."

Killian pulls back to fix Peter with a somber, uneasy stare. "What are you saying, Peter? You could make me immortal?"

"If you stayed here, in Neverland, it could be like this always."

"I can't. You know I can't." Killian frowns, his voice becomes strained with emphasis as he declares, "I've a date with destiny and I intend to keep it. I _must_ do this."

His thoughts become fragmented with frustration as he hears, _I am nothing without it._

"What about after? Once you've finally skinned your crocodile, what then?"

"I've never thought about after." He licks his lips like the very idea makes him feel dry, shipwrecked. "I can't afford to think that way."

"Why not?" Peter shoves him hard, one clean push that knocks him on his side, and then Peter is glowering at him with that grave and suspicious gaze. "I pay you handsomely, you can afford whatever you want. What is it you're not saying?" Peter prods him in the chest. "Hm? You don't enjoy this?"

Killian looks pained, struggles for the right words. "I do... enjoy this, Peter--" Swallows. "It's not that."

"Then what? Are you afraid?"

"No."

"Then _what?!"_

It takes him a moment to muster the courage. Then, in a deadened voice: "I don't love you."

Peter goes still.

He reaches for the boy, already saying "I'm sorry--"

But Peter interrupts this stilted apology by jerking away. He sits upright in the Captain's bed and stares wide-eyed with some kind of, of injured fury, straight at the wall ahead. The sheet slips down off his shoulder and he can't even _look_ at Killian. "If you don't love me, then what is _this?"_

 _"This?_ This isn't _love,_ Peter, it's..."

The boy waits, frozen on the edge of a knife.

"It's _solace,"_ he says.

The tides are rolling out. Waves crash against the sides of the hull, creaking in between them. Storm's coming. The tide slinks away.

Peter stares. "What's the difference?"

It _hurts_ Killian, this question-- this suggestion that Peter, lonely and maniacal Peter Pan, doesn't _understand._

Killian hesitates. Asks softly, "Have you ever been in love?"

"Apparently not." Peter looks away.

"You... you thought..."

"I don't think anything, unless I'm thinking it through. I make plans. Your heart is not true." Peter says these things like he's reading a script, rattling off lines he knows are his but wishes they weren't. "I'll make new plans." He's cold, he's gone cold.

"I'm sorry," Killian pleads.

"Why? I'm the one who believed in a _pirate."_

"Well this _pirate,"_ his tongue clicks sharply on the hard close of the T, "believes in _you."_

Peter murmurs, "That's useless to me. I'll make new plans." His gaze is distant, far away; he sounds like he's in a trance, like he's underwater.

"I'm sorry--"

"Stop apologizing!" Peter shouts, snaps out of it, whirls on Killian to seethe, "I'm not a _child."_

"I _know,_ I know that," Killian stammers, "I'm apologizing because _I'm_ sorry. I wish... I could've been better for you." He reaches for the boy's cheek but Peter's having none of it, scowls at him until his hand stills in the air and then falls to the sheets. "But it's much, much too late for that. For me. I can't..."

"You can't see past your revenge," Peter finishes bitterly.

"I can think of _nothing else,"_ Killian confirms with passion, "And that's why I mustn't try, don't you understand? I'm _hollow,_ Peter. The only time I'm even halfway here is when... when we..."

"When you get your jollies off?" Peter quips.

He can't stand to meet Peter's gaze, his jaw clenches.

"That's fine."

"Peter--"

"It's _fine,_ Captain." Peter waves him away with a flick of his wrist, it looks just like every other being with enormous power; careless. Easy. Moves worlds. Ruins lives. "You'll have your Dreamshade. Go get your revenge."

Killian winces at the gesture, and then the _words_ set in. His eyes widen. "Are you saying--"

"Yes. You're free to go, now. I'm done with you." Killian stares at Peter stupidly. Peter stares at the wall. _"Go!"_

"Then this... is goodbye."

He stands, begins collecting his shed clothing from the cabin deck; he moves like creaking masts, like time isn't quite still it's just slow, takes him three years to button a shirt. Peter isn't even looking at him.

"If you came back," Peter says, and Killian jerks but the boy isn't even looking at him, "After." Six months pass in silence and Killian clasps another button. "When you finish it, if you can't think of anywhere else to go, you could come back."

He doesn't know what just happened.

He feels _safe_ here, he feels weak but protected, he feels lust, he does not feel love. Just gratitude and desire, and it's such a hollow state of being but he's made love for less and gone on with worse.

Still, he can't shake the nagging feeling that this, that so much here is wrong, and then he realizes, _he could live like this forever._ What he's done here is build a pretty decent life for himself, completely by accident, by playing absent-mindedly into the conniving clutches of a man-- boy-- some creature whose ultimate designs vastly outweigh his own. His other choices in life were always so... _dramatic,_ and noteworthy, even if they were merely strong reactions to tragic events wrought upon him. At least then he _knew_ what he was doing. What he was getting himself into, and why it mattered. This time, he didn't react strongly enough to even notice he was making the choice, so it didn't feel like his. But Peter, clever Peter, was right.

It comforts Killian to think that someone who's always so one step ahead is actually on his side. And then he remembers _how_ Peter manages to be this clever.

Manipulation. Trickery. Killian's good work.

Killian's _vile_ work.

He can't stay here. He _can't_ live like this. He doesn't want to live forever.

It's with a sickening shock that Killian realizes he does, in fact, want to die sometime. Peter was right again. Killian hasn't the stomach for an immortal life, moving eternally at the side of this being whose existence he cannot fathom, who works on a cosmic scale so much grander and more intricate and convoluted than any human man should ever encounter. Killian is making love to the cartographer of dreams. He sleeps beside the mind behind the machinations of multiple realms at night, and holds the ruler of an entire world in his arms. He kisses the lips that bear prophecy unto Lost Boys' ears. He was not meant for this.

It's suffocating, it's too much, and it _wasn't what he meant to do._ He came here for Dreamshade, and _nothing more;_ instead he got roped into making a place for himself as both lover and footsoldier for someone altogether unexpected and-- _and wrong._ When he became a pirate, he vowed never to serve a corrupt king, but now he captains an empty ship to run errands for a psychopathic little imp who styles himself the king of corruption. When Milah died, he vowed never to rest until avenging their love, but now he relaxes in the bed of the beast and makes love just to forget the agony of her name.

What just happened is: the decision he never really made was, once again, made _for_ him. Peter's good work.

And it's not that Peter, clever Peter, monstrous and mythical and magical Peter, is too much for him... it's that Peter's version of greatness is _not the greatness he wanted._ Not his choice. So now Peter says why bother, and the choice is taken away.

And it's all been such a waste.

"Thanks for the offer," he says sadly, "We'll see."

 

***

Killian is _not_

a believer.


End file.
